Anew

The last minutes of sunlight are breathtaking. A warm peachy fire beams down 26th street as we leave the bar, and I hurry down the avenue to catch a train before it's too late. Cross the Williamsburg Bridge and think this is the last time I'll be going here, but it's too big to imagine. The Chrysler building dances in pink twilight in the distance; there's something about the light and the city hasn't been this beautiful in ages. 

I catch the last fleeting moments of bumbling sunset on the roof of the old pasta factory. J trains rumble across the bridge without interruption. The city sprawls and snuggles infinitely. We manage to laugh but I don't know how: it's all over now. 

As the others gather the last empty beer cans and begin the trek back downstairs, to divvy up leftover flour bags and designer shoes that won't fit in the suitcase, I stay up there for a minute, staring. It occurs to me that nothing has ever made me as happy as being in this city does. That for all my excruciating vagabondery and trembling commitment issues, this place has always, always felt like home. That if you have one truly good thing in your life, you owe it to yourself not to squander it. 

I'm in, I whisper, and for once I believe it. That I will stop pretending I need to be going elsewhere, that this is a temporary bliss I don't really deserve. I will stay here now, I will build a life until it is built within me. 

New York,

Baby, 

I'm in. 

There Was a Love Affair

New York summer arrives. You make peace with the air like treacle in your lungs, accept the steady trickle of sweat down the small of your back. Spend five minutes in air conditioning and forget what is out there, it smacks you in the face every time. The F train is running with delays, a voice says, and you try to slow the warm pulse in your veins. 

Next Thursday seems like a black hole, he says, like the shadow of a spot so dense no light escapes. You know the feeling so well. Half the boxes packed, the impossibility of seeing what lies behind that magic date and everything will work out because it's too late to go back now. You should have taken that G when it came, transferred at Hoyt Schermerhorn. You don't understand how others look so unaffected. Black jeans and boots. You are a puddle along the platform. 

It's different this time, you know. I still talk of end dates and movings and not even this can last forever, but it doesn't feel the same. New York City has rooted itself in my backbone, has nestled itself into the spaces that were not mad with youth and fervor, not deranged with childhood trauma in search of a fix. It has crept into the parts of me that make a life, that build a home when it thinks no one is watching. I look at every building, every street corner, every hurried face, and I know. 

I am exactly where I ought to be. 

Shake This Old Thing

It's warm, but not New York warm, you walk slowly with a breeze on your back to the south Williamsburg pasta factory. Four years you've been coming here, before they lived here you came to admire the view and dream about a life in New York that was yours for the taking. Today it's the longest day of the year and they say their farewells, you cry when no one is watching and try to believe there will be a life after they leave. Remember you left them once and they built a life here in your absence. You are not used to being left behind. 

Do you remember that summer, we sat in the fifth floor window and looked at the Manhattan skyline, whispering dreams into the humid summer night and grateful just to be allowed in. It is ours now, this city, it will be yours forever whenever you want to come back to it. The dance floor was sweaty but we escaped back up to that roof to the magic view and endless air. I saw stars but what need had I for them?

 I have you.

The Excess

This view.. This city.. I just can't... He said in unbelieving awe. His first time in New York, and here he was at the top of the Brooklyn factory that showed him every building block of the city. The day had been sweltering, but the sunset brought cool winds and the light that made everything glow. 

It's like I get high off their fumes, she said, like I'm addicted to the feeling of seeing New York for the very first time and I can't get enough. There were tears in her eyes now, and I knew just what she meant. I still remember sitting in that SuperShuttle, eight years ago soon, and we dropped another group off near the David Letterman marquee as we made our way to 50th and 1st. Still remember the mad dash to the Lexington apartment and the view of the Empire State Building from the terrace. How impossible it seemed that this city really existed, that we were really there. All these years later, she whispered, and I still haven't taken enough pictures of this skyline. No filter can do justice to what actually seeing it is like. 

They pack their bags now, count down days. Tell themselves they will be back, time and again, and that the city will be here when they do. It just seems like my dream was to come here and live this exact life, and where does one go from that? How does one leave that?

We sat silently in the approaching dusk. Midtown twinkled across the water. I was grateful then that it was not me leaving, that those trains would keep rocking over the Williamsburg bridge and the skyscrapers keep humming in my periphery. The newcomer brought up his wife to see this strange new world they'd uncovered. We drank our beers in silence. There's no doing this picture justice. 

(Post Script)

(and I wasn't completely honest, you know,
when you asked me about the words, 
because I think sometimes,
well, I fear sometimes,
that they are gone completely
and it is all over.
But it's not true, 
not at all, 
they are here all the time
telling me their secrets, 
I just have to catch them,
properly,
like fireflies in glass jars,
and when I do,
I think it will all work out
and every
dark
day
will have been worth it.)

Ampersand

Port Authority runs like a dusty labyrinth, it turns people gray just from walking through it. There are no windows, no signs of fresh air or towering cities, only meandering caverns and dark doorways to unknown destinations. I ride the escalators to the Greyhound gates and there she is, like no dark winter months have passed, like no thousands of ocean miles; a bucket of beer later, I forget they ever did. We bring another six-pack to the stoop, and only after the cops have fined us do we go inside. The stories amass.

New York City takes on the same magical air it always does when I am trying to show it off. The summer sunlight makes the brick buildings hum, the Hudson glitter. She buys me dinner at that restaurant that makes me smile, and a hundred drinks later we saunter down the west village streets in revered silence. I show her where Woody Guthrie lived, the same building where we drank all that wine on the fire escape, you remember, and she shivered in awe. New York will do that to you. I read old journals from that other town and all they say are how much I wish I was here.

I don't think of you as much as I used to. Your smile doesn't burn my carefully constructed shelter like it did, and I am grateful for every day the air is not knocked out of my gut at the sound of your name. I wish you nothing but blue skies. This city will weather the storms in your wake, for me.

Steeped

We're on the island. Can we make it a stoop night? And whatever plans I may have had, none of them were worth more than drinking bubbly on the Morton Street steps in their company. I brought the ailing dog, several flutes, and we moved onto the sweltering street. Neighbors pass through our setup, some I have known for years and some are so new I can't tell them apart. It occurs to me that I have lived longer in this apartment than any other place in my adult life. It's too soon to say what that means.

They count down the days to departure. We stare into the West Village nights and smile, ignore the numbers in our head.

On Point

journal excerpt,

September 15, 2013

This is my last night in the apartment at Klippgatan. I can't believe this day has come. 

The neighbor across the street watches TV, always. The old lady is still awake, puttering about. Soon, the last sunrise over the apartment at the top of the hill. Soon, my dear sweet Sofia church will reign over other inhabitants, life will go on as though I was never here at all. It always does. 

It seems somehow different this time, like it's really become clear what a sad disease I suffer, how I may tragically walk through life never making permanent commitments, always clearing out and moving on, always leaving my loyal, supportive friends in the dust and going on to greener pastures that never are. 

This has been a great apartment. It has been a blessing. 

But I feel nothing now, 

That it's over. 

Grounds

The problem is not unhappiness. If it were unhappiness, I would leave it. 

The problem is in cloudless skies I do not know my own skin, in uncomplicated joy I forget the reason I came. If I let these demons go, I fear none of me would remain. 

So they linger in my folds. 

I wish they would devour me,

instead. 

Stepped Outside

My teeth ache. They grind themselves to pulp in the night when I cannot convince them otherwise. I walk to work with a scowl. Spend the nights with a dark cloud along my brow. I try to know why but clarity eludes me. The days are too often muddled. 

We sat on the stoop last night, drinking the season's first champagne and eating strawberries. I chain smoked deep curling drags into the heavy air and passersby could not help themselves but comment on the appeal of our feast. We spoke of the packed bags in her apartment, of what it meant to leave New York. 

But I won't accept that all is lost and over just because we are making a change, she said. New York is our home, the restaurants may change over the years but we will always know these streets. If whatever comes next is so awful, we can always come back. 

We sat a long time on that stoop. We spoke of life, and grief, and futures. Neighbors came and went, stepping lightly around the spread, and when the time came to part I was more than a little intoxicated. Perhaps it was the last time we had drinks on the stoop together. 

But it doesn't mean all is lost. 

Wreck Me

It was somewhere near Battery Park City that the feeling hit me. Like hot air hits you when you leave the airport of a tropical land, and it is immediately all over you, it consumes you and assumes you and you can no longer remember what it was like to feel any other way. The New York twilight was dark, and scintillating, a hint of green across the New Jersey and the Freedom Tower looming impossibly tall, twinkling. A sliver of new moon wavered over all, and I stopped dead in my tracks with sweat coursing along my temples.

I have had enough now.

And somehow I believed it must be true. That I have had enough. Of this self-annihilation and ridiculous games of a pretend life that never is. Of painting images where none are, simply because no one takes it upon themselves to tell me off. I have had enough of living with one foot in sanity and one in madness.

I have had enough of not living in art.

I continued running after that, faster and harder until my feet hit the pavement loudly and I thought I would throw up with exhaustion. Coming home, I began to scrub the kitchen cupboards and sing until my lungs wearied and my throat was dry, my fingers raw. Books lay open to favorite lines and dog-eared pages, and I absorbed them like brand new truths, like sermons to the recently converted. The cogs and wheels began to twist and turn around my insides, wringing out soured desires and tragic dead ends. I feel my vessel clean itself out, ready itself for brighter journeys.

No one ever looks back at their life wishing they'd taken the straight and certain.